itation, which remains for it an absolute, merely giving it a subjective instead of an objective shape and making into determinatenesses of the ego and into a turbulent whirlpool of change within it (as if the ego were a thing) that which the ordinary consciousness knows as a manifoldness and alteration belonging only to things external to it. At present we are considering only the thing−in−itself and the reflection which is in the first instance external to it; this reflection has not yet determined itself to consciousness, nor the thing−in−itself to ego. We have seen from the nature of the thing−in−itself and of external reflection that this same external reflection determines itself to be the thing−in−itself, or, conversely, becomes the first thing−in−itself's own determination. § 1063 Now the inadequacy of the standpoint at which this philosophy stops short consists essentially in holding fast to the abstract thing−in−itself as an ultimate determination, and in opposing to the thing−in−itself reflection or the determinateness and manifoldness of the properties; whereas in fact the thing−in−itself essentially possesses this external reflection within itself and determines itself to be a thing with its own determinations, a thing endowed with properties, in this way demonstrating the abstraction of the thing as a pure thing−in−itself to be an untrue determination. Science of Logic Chapter 1 Existence 70 (c) The Reciprocal Action of Things B The Constitution of the Thing out of Matters C Dissolution of the Thing Chapter 2 Appearance § 1080 Existence is the immediacy of being to which essence has restored itself again. This immediacy is in itself the reflection of essence into itself. Essence, as Existence, has issued from its ground which has itself passed over into it. Existence is this reflected immediacy in so far as it is in its own self absolute negativity. It is now also posited as this in that it has determined itself as Appearance. § 1081 Accordingly Appearance is at first essence in its Existence; essence is immediately present in it. The fact that it is not immediate but reflected Existence, constitutes the moment of essence in it; or, Existence as essential Existence is Appearance. § 1082 Something is only Appearance −− in the sense that Existence as such is only a posited being, not a being in and for itself. This constitutes its essentiality, to have within itself the negativity of reflection, the nature of essence. This is not an alien, external reflection to which essence belongs and which, by comparing essence with Existence, pronounces the latter to be Appearance. On the contrary, as we have seen, this essentiality of Existence which constitutes its Appearance, is the truth of Existence itself. The reflection by virtue of which it is this, is its own. § 1083 But if it is said that something is only Appearance, in the sense that contrasted with it immediate Existence is the truth, then the fact is that Appearance is the higher truth; for it is Existence as essential Appearance, whereas Existence, on the contrary, is still essenceless Appearance because it contains only the one moment of Appearance, namely, Existence as immediate reflection, not yet as its negative reflection. When Appearance is called essenceless, one thinks of the moment of its negativity as though the immediate by contrast were the positive and the true; but the fact is that this immediate does not as yet contain the essential truth. it is when Existence passes over into Appearance that it ceases to be essenceless. § 1084 Essence at first reflects an illusory being [schein] within itself, within its simple identity; as such it is abstract reflection, the pure movement from nothing through nothing back to itself. Essence appears, so that it is now real illusory being, since the moments of illusory being have Existence. As we have seen, Appearance is the thing as the negative mediation of itself with itself; the differences it contains are self−subsistent matters which are the contradiction of being an immediate subsistence and at the same time only in an alien self−subsistence, of therefore having their subsistence in the negation of their own self−subsistence, and again for that very reason also only in the negation of this alien negation, or in the negation of their own negation. Illusory being is the same mediation, but its unstable moments have, in Appearance, the shape of immediate self−subsistence. On the other hand, the immediate self−subsistence which belongs to Existence is, on its part, reduced to a moment. Appearance is accordingly the unity of illusory being and Existence. Science of Logic Chapter 2 Appearance 71 § 1085 Appearance now determines itself further. It is essential Existence; the latter's essentiality is distinguished from Appearance as unessential and these two sides enter into relation with each other. It is therefore at first simple self−identity which also contains various content−determinations; and these themselves as well as their relation are what remains self−equal in the flux of Appearance; this is the law of Appearance. § 1086 Secondly, however, the law which is simple in its diversity passes over into opposition; the essential moment of Appearance becomes opposed to Appearance itself, and the world of Appearance is confronted by the world of essence [die an sich seiende Welt]. § 1087 Thirdly, this opposition returns into its ground; that which is in itself is in the Appearance and conversely that which appears is determined as taken up into its in−itself; Appearance becomes correlation or essential relation. A The Law of Appearance B The World of Appearance and the World−in−itself C Dissolution of Appearance Chapter 3 The Essential Relation A The Relation of Whole and Parts B The Relation of Force and its Expression (a) The Conditionedness of Force (b) The Solicitation of Force (c) The Infinity of Force C Relation of Outer and Inner Remark: Immediate Identity of Inner and Outer § 1152 The movement of essence is in general the becoming of the Notion. In the relation of inner and outer, the essential moment of this emerges namely, that its determinations are posited as being in negative unity in such a manner that each immediately is not only it other but also the totality of the whole. But in the Notion as such this totality is the universal−a substrate which is not yet present in the relation of inner and outer. In the negative identity of inner and outer which is the immediate conversion of one of these determinations into the other, there is also lacking that substrate which above was called the fact. § 1153 It is very important to notice that the unmediated identity of form is posited here without the movement of the fact itself, a movement pregnant with content. It occurs in the fact as this is in its beginning. Thus pure being is immediately nothing. In general, everything real is, in its beginning, such a merely immediate identity; for in its beginning it has not yet opposed and developed its moments; on the one hand it has not yet inwardised itself out of externality. and on the other hand, it has not yet externalised and brought forth itself, out of inwardness by its activity. It is therefore only the inner as determinateness against the outer, and only the outer as determinateness against the inner. Hence it is partly only an immediate being; partly, in so far as it is Science of Logic Chapter 3 The Essential Relation 72 equally the negativity which is to be the activity of the development, it is as such essentially only as yet an inner. This makes itself apparent in all natural, scientific and spiritual development generally and it is essential to recognise that because something is at first, only inner or also is in its Notion, the first stage is for that very reason only its immediate, passive existence. Thus −− to take at once the nearest example −− the essential relation here considered is only implicitly [an sich] the relation, only its Notion, or is at first only internal, before it has moved through the mediation of the relation of force and has realised itself. But for this reason it is only the outer, immediate relation, the relation of whole and parts, in which the sides have a mutually indifferent subsistence. Their identity is not as yet within themselves; it is only internal and the sides therefore fall apart, have an immediate, external subsistence. Thus the sphere of being as such is as yet still the completely inner and is therefore the sphere of simply affirmative [seienden] immediacy or externality. Essence is at first only the inner, and it, too, is for this reason taken as a wholly external, unsystematised, common element; one speaks of public instruction, the press [Schulwesen, Zeitungswesen], and understands thereby something common formed by an external aggregation of existing objects lacking any essential connection or organisation; or to take concrete objects, the seed of the plant, or the child, is at first only inner plant, internal man. But this is why the plant or the man as germ is an immediate, and outer, which has not as yet given itself the negative reference to itself, is something passive, a prey to otherness. Thus God, too, in his immediate Notion is not spirit; spirit is not the immediate, that which is opposed to mediation, but on the contrary is the essence that eternally posits its immediacy and eternally returns out of it into itself. Immediately, therefore God is only nature. Or, nature is only the Inner God, not God actual as spirit, and therefore not truly God. Or, in our thinking, our first thinking, God is only pure being, or even essence, the abstract absolute, but not God as absolute spirit, which alone is the true nature of God. Transition to Actuality Section Three: Actuality § 1158 Actuality is the unity of essence and Existence; in it, formless essence and unstable Appearance, or mere subsistence devoid of all determination and unstable manifoldness, have their truth. Existence is, indeed, the immediacy which has proceeded from ground, but form is not as yet posited in it. In determining and forming itself it is Appearance; and when this subsistence which is determined only as reflection−into−an−other is developed further into reflection−into−self, it becomes two worlds, two totalities of the content, one of which is determined as reflected into itself, the other as reflected into an other. But the essential relation exhibits their form relation, the consummation of which is the relation of inner and outer in which the content of both is only one identical substrate and equally only one identity of form. By virtue of the fact that this identity is now also identity of form, the form determination of their difference is sublated, and it is posited that they are one absolute totality. § 1159 This unity of inner and outer is absolute actuality. But this actuality is, in the first instance, the absolute as such −− in so far as it is posited as a unity in which form has sublated itself and made itself into the empty or Science of Logic Section Three: Actuality 73 outer difference of an outer and inner. Reflection is external in its relation to this absolute, which, it merely contemplates rather than is the absolute's own movement. But since it is essentially this movement, it is so as the negative return of the absolute into itself. § 1160 Secondly, we have actuality proper. Actuality, possibility and necessity constitute the formal moments of the absolute, or its reflection. § 1161 Thirdly, the unity of the absolute and its reflection is the absolute relation, or rather the absolute as relation to itself −− substance. Chapter 1 The Absolute A The Exposition of the Absolute B The Absolute Attribute C The Mode of the Absolute Remark: The Philosophy of Spinoza and Leibniz Chapter 2 Actuality § 1187 The absolute is the unity of inner and outer as initial, implicit unity. The exposition appeared as external reflection which, on its side, has the immediate before it as something already given, but is at the same time the movement and relation of this to the absolute, and as such movement leads it back into the absolute and determines it as a mere 'way and manner'. But this 'way and manner' is the determination of the absolute itself, namely, its initial identity or its merely implicit unity. And through this reflection, too, not only is that initial in−itself posited as essenceless determination but, since the reflection is negative self−relation, it is through this alone that the in−itself becomes this mode. This reflection, as sublating itself in its determinations and in general as the self−returning movement, is first truly absolute identity and at the same time is the determining of the absolute or its modality. The mode is therefore the externality of the absolute, but equally only as the reflection of the absolute into itself; or it is the absolute's own manifestation, so that this manifestation is its reflection−into−self and therefore its being−in−and−for−itself. § 1188 The absolute as such manifestation, the absolute which is nothing else and has no content save that of being self−manifestation, is absolute form. Actuality is to be taken as this reflected absoluteness. Being is not yet actual: it is the first immediacy; its reflection is therefore a becoming and transition into an other; or its immediacy is not being−in−and−for−itself. Actuality also stands higher than Existence. True, Existence is the immediacy that has proceeded from ground and conditions, or from essence and its reflection. It is therefore in itself what actuality is, real reflection, but it is not yet the posited unity of reflection and immediacy. Existence therefore passes over into appearance in that it develops the reflection which it contains. It is the ground that has fallen to the ground; its determination is the restoration of the ground; thus it becomes essential relation and its final reflection is the positing of its immediacy as reflection−into−self, and Science of Logic Chapter 1 The Absolute 74 conversely; now this unity in which Existence or immediacy, and the in−itself, the ground or the reflected are simply moments, is actuality. The actual is therefore manifestation; it is not drawn into the sphere of alteration by its externality, nor is it the reflecting of itself in an other, but it manifests itself; that is, in its externality it is itself and is itself in that alone, namely only as a self−distinguishing and self−determining movement. § 1189 Now in actuality as this absolute form, the moments are only as sublated or formal, not yet realised; their difference thus belongs at first to external reflection and is not determined as content. § 1190 Actuality as itself the immediate form −− unity of inner and outer is thus in the determination of immediacy over against the determination of reflection−into−self; or it is an actuality as against a possibility. Their relation to each other is the third term, the actual determined equally as a being reflected into itself, and this at the same time as a being existing immediately. This third term is necessity. § 1191 But first of all, since the actual and the possible are formal differences, their relation is likewise merely formal and consist only in the fact that the one like the other is a positedness, or in contingency. Now since in contingency, the actual as well as the possible is positedness, they have received determination in themselves; the actual thereby becomes, secondly, real actuality and with it equally emerges real possibility and relative necessity. Thirdly, the reflection of relative necessity into itself yields absolute necessity, which is absolute possibility and actuality. A Contingency B Relative Necessity C Absolute Necessity Chapter 3 The Absolute Relation A The Relation of Substantiality B The Relation of Causality (a) Formal Causality (b) The Determinate Relation of Causality (c) Action and Reaction C Reciprocity § 1272 In finite causality it is substances that are actively related to each other. Mechanism consists in this externality of causality, where the reflection of the cause into itself in its effect is at the same time a repelling being, or where, in the self−identity which the causal substance has in its effect, the cause equally remains something immediately external to it, and the effect has passed over into another substance. Now, in reciprocity this mechanism is sublated; for it contains first the vanishing of that original persistence of the immediate substantiality, and secondly the coming−to−be of the cause, and hence originativeness as Science of Logic Chapter 3 The Absolute Relation 75 self−mediating through its negation. § 1273 At first, reciprocity displays itself as a reciprocal causality of presupposed, self−conditioned substances; each is alike active arid passive substance in relation to the other. Since the two, then, are both passive and active, any distinction between them has already been sublated; the difference is only a completely transparent semblance; they are substances only inasmuch as they are the identity of the active and the passive. Reciprocity itself is therefore still only an empty mode of representing this; all that is still required is merely an external bringing together of what is already both in itself and posited. First of all, it is no longer substrates but substances that stand in relation to each other; in the movement of conditioned causality, the still remaining presupposed immediacy has been sublated, and the conditioning factor of the causal activity is still only the passivity of being acted upon, or the passivity of the cause itself. But further, this 'being acted upon' does not originate in another causal substance, but simply from a causality which is conditioned by being acted upon, or is a mediated causality. Consequently, this initially external moment which attaches to cause and constitutes the side of its passivity, is mediated by itself, is produced by its own activity, and is thus the passivity posited by its own activity. Causality is conditioned and conditioning; the conditioning side is passive, but the conditioned side equally is passive. This conditioning or passivity is the negation of cause by the cause itself, in that it essentially converts itself into effect and precisely through this is cause. Reciprocity is, therefore, only causality itself; cause not only has an effect, but in the effect it stands, as cause, in relation to itself. § 1274 Causality has hereby returned to its absolute Notion, and at the same time has attained to the Notion itself. At first, it is real necessity; absolute identity with itself, so that the difference of necessity and the related determinations in it are substances, free actualities, over against one another. Necessity is, in this way, inner identity; causality is the manifestation of this, in which its illusory show of substantial otherness has sublated itself and necessity is raised to freedom. § 1275 In reciprocity, originative causality displays itself as an arising from its negation, from passivity, and as a passing away into the same, as a becoming; but in such a manner that at the same time this becoming is equally only illusory; the transition into an other is a reflection into itself; the negation, which is ground of the cause, is its positive union with itself. In reciprocity, therefore, necessity and causality have vanished; they contain both, immediate identity as connection and relation, and the absolute substantiality of the different sides, hence the absolute contingency of them;, the original unity of substantial difference, and therefore absolute contradiction. Necessity is being, because it is−the unity of being with itself that has itself for ground; but conversely, because it has a ground it is not being, it is an altogether illusory being, relation or mediation. Causality is this posited transition of originative being, of cause, into illusory being or mere positedness, and conversely, of positedness into originativeness; but the identity itself of being and illusory being is still an inner necessity. This inwardness or this in−itself, sublates the movement of causality, with the result that the substantiality of the sides standing in relation is lost, and necessity unveils itself. Necessity does not become freedom by vanishing, but only because its still inner identity is manifested, a manifestation which is the identical. movement of the different sides within themselves, the reflection of the illusory being as illusory being into itself. Science of Logic Chapter 3 The Absolute Relation 76 Conversely, at the same time, contingency becomes freedom, for the sides of necessity, which have the shape of independent, free actualities not reflecting themselves in one another, are now posited as an identity, so that these totalities of reflection−into−self in their difference are now also reflected as identical, or are posited as only one and the same reflection. § 1276 Absolute substance, which as absolute form distinguishes itself from itself, therefore no longer repels itself as necessity from itself, nor, as contingency, does it fall asunder into indifferent, self−external substances; on the contrary, it differentiates itself, on the one hand, into the totality −− heretofore passive substance −− which is originative as reflection out of the determinateness into itself, as a simple whole, which contains within itself its positedness and is posited as self−identical therein−the universal; on the other hand, it differentiates itself into the totality −− heretofore causal substance −− into the reflection equally out of the determinateness into itself to a negative determinateness which, as thus the self−identical determinateness is likewise posited as the whole, but as self−identical negativity−the individual. But because the universal is self−identical only in that it contains the determinateness within itself as sublated, and therefore the negative as negative, it is immediately the same negativity which individuality is; and individuality, because it is equally the determinate determinate, the negative as negative, is immediately the same identity which universality is. This their simple identity is particularity, which contains in immediate unity the moment of determinateness of the individual and the moment of reflection−into−self of the universal. These three totalities are, therefore, one and the same reflection, which, as negative self−relation, differentiates itself into these two, but into a perfectly transparent difference, namely, into a determinate simplicity or simple determinateness which is their one and the same identity. This is the Notion, the realm of subjectivity or of freedom. Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion Foreword § 1277 This part of the logic which contains the Doctrine of the Notion and constitutes the third part of the whole, is also issued under the particular title System of Subjective Logic, for the convenience of those friends of this science who are accustomed to take a greater interest in the matters here treated and included in the scope of logic commonly so called, than in the further logical topics treated in the first two parts. For these earlier parts I could claim the indulgence of fair−minded critics on account of the scant preliminary studies in this field which could have afforded me a support, material, and a guiding thread. In the case of the present part, I may claim their indulgence rather for the opposite reason; for the logic of the Notion, a completely ready−made and solidified, one may say, ossified material is already to hand, and the problem is to render this material fluid and to re−kindle the spontaneity of the Notion in such dead matter. If the building of a new city in a waste land is attended with difficulties, yet there is no shortage of materials; but the abundance of materials presents all the more obstacles of another kind when the task is to remodel an ancient city, solidly built, and maintained in continuous possession and occupation. Among other things one must resolve to make no use at all of much material that has hitherto been highly esteemed. § 1278 But above all, the grandeur of the subject matter may be advanced as an excuse for the imperfect execution. For what subject matter can cognition have that is more sublime than truth itself! Yet the doubt whether it is Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 77 not just this subject matter that requires an excuse may occur to us if we recall the sense in which Pilate put the question, What is truth? In the words of the poet: 'With the courtier's mien that purblind yet smiling condemns the cause of the earnest soul.' Pilate's question bears the meaning −− which may be regarded as an element in good manners −− together with a reminder of it, that the aim of attaining truth is, as everyone knows, something given up and long since set aside, and that the unattainableness of truth is recognised even among professional philosophers and logicians. But if the question that religion raises as to the value of things, insights, and actions −− a question which in its import has a like meaning −− is once more vindicating its claims in our days, then philosophy must surely hope that it will no longer be thought so strange if it, too, in its immediate domain once more asserts its true aim, and, after having lapsed into the manner and method of other sciences and their renunciation of the claim to truth, strives to rise again to that aim. In respect of this attempt, it is not, strictly speaking, permissible to offer any apology; but in respect of the execution, I may plead in excuse that my official duties and other personal circumstances allowed me but scattered hours of labour at a science that demands and deserves undistracted and undivided exertion. Nuremberg, July 21, 1816 The Notion in General § 1279 What the nature of the Notion is, can no more be stated offhand than can the Notion of any other object. It might perhaps seem that, in order to state the Notion of an object, the logical element were presupposed and that therefore this could not in turn have something else for its presupposition, nor be deduced; just as in geometry logical propositions as applied to magnitude and employed in that science, are premised in the form of axioms, determinations of cognition that have not been and cannot be deduced. Now although it is true that the Notion is to be regarded, not merely as a subjective presupposition but as the absolute foundation, yet it can be so only in so far as it has made itself the foundation. Abstract immediacy is no doubt a first; yet in so far as it is abstract it is, on the contrary mediated, and therefore if it is to be grasped in its truth its foundation must first be sought. Hence this foundation, though indeed an immediate, must have made itself immediate through the sublation of mediation. § 1280 From this aspect the Notion is to be regarded in the first instance simply as the third to being and essence, to the immediate and to reflection. Being and essence are so far the moments of its becoming; but it is their foundation and truth as the identity in which they are submerged and contained. They are contained in it because it is their result, but no longer as being and essence. That determination they possess only in so far as they have not withdrawn into this their unity. § 1281 Objective logic therefore, which treats of being and essence constitutes properly the genetic exposition of the Notion. More precisely, substance is already real essence, or essence in so far as it is united with being and has entered into actuality. Consequently, the Notion has substance for its immediate presupposition; what is implicit in substance is manifested in the Notion. Thus the dialectical movement of substance through causality and reciprocity is the immediate genesis of the Notion, the exposition of the process of its becoming. But the significance of its becoming, as of every becoming is that it is the reflection of the transient into its ground and that the at first apparent other into which the former has passed constitutes its truth. Accordingly the Notion is the truth of substance; and since substance has necessity for its specific mode of relationship, freedom reveals itself as the truth of necessity and as the mode of relationship proper to the Notion. Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 78 § 1282 The progressive determination of substance necessitated by its own nature, is the positing of what is in and for itself. Now the Notion is that absolute unity of being and reflection in which being is in and for itself only in so far as it is no less reflection or positedness, and positedness is no less being that is in and for itself. This abstract result is elucidated by the exposition of its concrete genesis; that exposition contains the nature of the Notion whose treatment it must have preceded. The chief moments of this exposition (which has been given in detail in the Second Book of the Objective Logic) can therefore only be briefly summarised here. § 1283 Substance is the absolute, the actuality that is in and for itself in itself as the simple identity of possibility and actuality, absolute essence containing all actuality and possibility within itself; and for itself, being this identity as absolute power or purely self−related negativity. The movement of substantiality posited by these moments consists in the following stages: § 1284 1. Substance, as absolute power or self−related negativity, differentiates itself into a relationship in which what were at first only simple moments are substances and original presuppositions. Their specific relationship is that of a passive substance, of the original immediacy of the simple inwardness or in−itself which, powerless to posit itself, is only an original positedness and of an active substance, the self−related negativity which as such has posited itself in the form of an other and relates itself to this other. This other is simply the passive substance which the active substance through its own originative power has presupposed for itself as condition. This presupposing is to be understood in the sense that the movement of substance itself is, in the first instance, under the form of one of the moments of its Notion, the in−itself, and the determinateness of one of the substances standing in relationship is also the determinateness of this relationship itself. § 1285 2. The other moment is being−for−self, which means that the power posits itself as self−related negativity, thereby sublating again what was presupposed. The active substance is the cause; it acts, that is, it now posits, whereas previously it only presupposed; so that (a) to the power is now added the illusory show of power, to the positedness the illusory show of positedness. What in the presupposition was original, becomes in causality, through the relation to an other, what it is in itself; the cause produces an effect, and that, too, in another substance; it is now power in relation to an other and thus appears as a cause, but is a cause only in virtue of this appearing. (b) The effect enters the passive substance, whereby it now also appears as a positedness, but is a passive substance only as such positedness. § 1286 3. But there is still more present in this than only this appearance, namely: (a) the cause acts on the passive substance and alters its determination; but this is positedness, there is nothing else in it to alter; the other determination, however, that it receives is causality; the passive substance therefore becomes cause, power and activity: (b) the effect is posited in it by the cause; but that which is posited by the cause is the cause itself which, in acting, is identical with itself; it is this that puts itself in the place of the passive substance. Similarly, with regard to the active substance, (a) the action is the translation of the cause into the effect, into the other of the cause, into positedness, and (b) the cause reveals itself in the effect as what it is; the effect is identical with the cause, is not an other−; thus the cause in acting reveals the posited being as that which the cause essentially is. Each side, therefore, in both its identical and negative relation to the other becomes the Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 79 opposite of itself, so that the other, and therefore also each, remains identical with itself. But the identical and the negative relations are both one and the same; substance is self−identical only in its opposite and this constitutes the absolute identity of the substances posited as a duality. Active substance, through the act of positing itself as the opposite of itself, an act which is at the same time the sublating of its presupposed otherness, of passive substance, is manifested as cause or originative substantiality. Conversely, through being acted on, posited being is manifested as posited, the negative as negative, and therefore passive substance as self−related negativity, the cause meeting in this other simply and solely with its own self. Through this positing, then, the presupposed or implicit originativeness becomes explicit or for itself; yet this being that is in and for itself is such only in so far as this positing is equally a sublating of what was presupposed; in other words absolute substance has returned to itself and so become absolute, only out of and in its positedness. Hence this reciprocity is the appearance that again sublates itself, the revelation that the illusory being of causality in which the cause appears as cause, is illusory being. This infinite reflection−into−self, namely, that being is in and for itself only in so far as it is posited, is the consummation of substance. But this consummation is no longer substance itself but something higher, the Notion, the subject. The transition of the relation of substantiality takes place through its own immanent necessity and is nothing more than the manifestation of itself, that the Notion is its truth, and that freedom is the truth of necessity. § 1287 I have already mentioned in the Second Book of the Objective Logic that the philosophy which adopts the standpoint of substance and stops there is the system of Spinoza. I also indicated there the defect of that system alike as to form and to matter. But the refutation of the system is another matter. With respect to the refutation of a philosophical system I have elsewhere also made the general observation that one must get rid of the erroneous idea of regarding the system as out and out false, as if the true system by contrast were only opposed to the false. The context itself in which Spinoza's system here finds mention provides the true standpoint of the system and the question whether it is true or false. The relation of substance resulted from the nature of essence; this relation and its exposition as a developed totality in a system is, therefore, a necessary standpoint assumed by the absolute. Such a standpoint, therefore, is not to be regarded as an opinion, a subjective, arbitrary way of thinking of an individual, as an aberration of speculation; on the contrary, speculative thinking in the course of its progress finds itself necessarily occupying that standpoint and to that extent the system is perfectly true; but it is not the highest standpoint. Yet this does not mean that the system can be regarded as false, as requiring and being capable of refutation; on the contrary, the only thing about it to be considered false is its claim to be the highest standpoint. Consequently, the true system cannot have the relation to it of being merely opposed to it; for if this were so, the system, as this opposite, would itself be one−sided. On the contrary, the true system as the higher, must contain the subordinate system within itself. § 1288 Further, the refutation must not come from outside, that is, it must not proceed from assumptions lying outside the system in question and inconsistent with it. The system need only refuse to recognise those assumptions; the defect is a defect only for him who starts from the requirements and demands based on those assumptions. Thus it has been said that for anyone who does not presuppose as an established fact the freedom and self−subsistence of the self−conscious subject there cannot be any refutation of Spinozism. Besides, a standpoint so lofty and so intrinsically rich as the relation of substance, far from ignoring those assumptions even contains them: one of the attributes of Spinoza's substance is thinking. On the contrary, Spinozism knows how to resolve and assimilate the determinations in which these assumptions conflict with it, so that they appear in the system, but in the modifications appropriate to it. The nerve, therefore, of the external Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 80 refutation consists solely in clinging stubbornly to the antitheses of these assumptions, for example, to the absolute self−subsistence of the thinking individual as against the form of thought posited in absolute substance as identical with extension. The genuine refutation must penetrate the opponent's stronghold and meet him on his own ground; no advantage is gained by attacking him somewhere else and defeating him where he is not. The only possible refutation of Spinozism must therefore consist, in the first place, in recognising its standpoint as essential and necessary and then going on to raise that standpoint to the higher one through its own immanent dialectic. The relationship of substance considered simply and solely in its own intrinsic nature leads on to its opposite, to the Notion. The exposition of substance (contained in the last book) which leads on to the Notion is, therefore, the sole and genuine refutation of Spinozism. It is the unveiling of substance, and this is the genesis of the Notion, the chief moments of which have been brought together above. The unity of substance is its relation of necessity; but this unity is only an inner necessity; in positing itself through the moment of absolute negativity it becomes a manifested or posited identity, and thereby the freedom which is the identity of the Notion. The Notion, the totality resulting from the reciprocal relation, is the unity of the two substances standing in that relation; but in this unity they are now free, for they no longer possess their identity as something blind, that is to say, as something merely inner; on the contrary, the substances now have essentially the status of an illusory being, of being moments of reflection, whereby each is no less immediately united with its other or its positedness and each contains its positedness within itself, and consequently in its other is posited as simply and solely identical with itself. § 1289 With the Notion, therefore, we have entered the realm of freedom. Freedom belongs to the Notion because that identity which, as absolutely determined, constitutes the necessity of substance, is now also sublated or is a positedness, and this positedness as self−related is simply that identity. The mutual opacity of the substances standing in the causal relationship has vanished and become a self−transparent clarity, for the originality of their self−subsistence has passed into a positedness; the original substance is original in that it is only the cause of itself, and this is substance raised to the freedom of the Notion. § 1290 This at once provides us with a more precise determination of mediately the Notion. Because being that is in and for itself is immediately a positedness, the Notion in its simple self−relation is an absolute determinateness which, however, as purely self−related is no less immediately a simple identity. But this self−relation of the determinateness as the union of itself with itself is equally the negation of the determinateness, and the Notion as this equality with itself is the universal. But this identity has equally the determination of negativity; it is the negation or determinateness which is self−related; thus the Notion is the individual. Each of them, the universal and the individual, is the totality, each contains within itself the determination of the other and therefore these totalities are one and one only, just as this unity is the differentiation of itself into the free illusion of this duality−of a duality which, in the difference of the individual and the universal, appears as a complete opposition, yet an opposition which is so entirely illusory that in thinking and enunciating the one, the other also is immediately thought and enunciated. § 1291 The foregoing is to be regarded as the Notion of the Notion. It may seem to differ from what is elsewhere understood by 'notion' and in that case we might be asked to indicate how that which we have here found to be the Notion is contained in other conceptions or explanations. On the one hand, however, there can be no question of a confirmation based on the authority of the ordinary understanding of the term; in the science of the Notion its content and character can be guaranteed solely by the immanent deduction which contains its genesis and which already lies behind us. On the other hand, the Notion as here deduced must, of course, be recognisable in principle in what is elsewhere presented as the concept of the Notion. But it is not so easy to Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 81 discover what others have said about the nature of the Notion. For in the main they do not concern themselves at all with the question, presupposing that everyone who uses the word automatically knows what it means. Latterly, one could have felt all the more relieved from any need to trouble about the Notion since, just as it was the fashion for a while to say everything bad about the imagination, and then the memory, so in philosophy it became the habit some time ago, a habit which in some measure still exists, to heap every kind of slander on the Notion, on what is supreme in thought, while the incomprehensible and non−comprehension are, on the contrary, regarded as the pinnacle of science and morality. I will confine myself here to a remark which may help one to grasp the notions here developed and may make it easier to find one's bearings in them. The Notion, when it has developed into a concrete existence that is itself free, is none other than the I or pure self−consciousness. True, I have notions, that is to say, determinate notions; but the I is the pure Notion itself which, as Notion, has come into existence. When, therefore, reference is made to the fundamental determinations which constitute the nature of the I, we may presuppose that the reference is to something familiar, that is, a commonplace of our ordinary thinking. But the I is, first, this pure self−related unity, and it is so not immediately but only as making abstraction from all determinateness and content and withdrawing into the freedom of unrestricted equality with itself. As such it is universality; a unity that is unity with itself only through its negative attitude, which appears as a process of abstraction, and that consequently contains all determinedness dissolved in it. Secondly, the I as self−related negativity is no less immediately individuality or is absolutely determined, opposing itself to all that is other and excluding it −− individual personality. This absolute universality which is also immediately an absolute individualisation, and an absolutely determined being, which is a pure positedness and is this absolutely determined being it only through its unity with the positedness, this constitutes the nature of the I −− as well as of the Notion; neither the one nor the other can be truly comprehended unless the two indicated moments are grasped at the same time both in their abstraction and also in their perfect unity. § 1292 When one speaks in the ordinary way of the understanding possessed by the I, one understands thereby a faculty or property which stands in the same relation to the I as the property of a thing does to the thing itself, that is, to an indeterminate substrate that is not the genuine ground and the determinant of its property. According to this conception I possess notions and the Notion, just as I also possess a coat, complexion, and other external properties. § 1293 Now Kant went beyond this external relation of the understanding, as the faculty of notions and of the Notion itself, to the I. It is one of the profoundest and truest insights to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason that the unity which constitutes the nature of the Notion is recognised as the original synthetic unity of apperception, as unity of the I think, or of self−consciousness. This proposition constitutes the so−called transcendental deduction of the categories; but this has always been regarded as one of the most difficult parts of the Kantian philosophy, doubtless for no other reason than that it demands that we should go beyond the mere representation of the relation in which the I stands to the understanding, or notions stand to a thing and its properties and accidents, and advance to the thought of that relation. An object, says Kant, is that in the notion of which the manifold of a given intuition is unified. But all unifying of representations demands a unity of consciousness in the synthesis of them. Consequently it is this unity of consciousness which alone constitutes the connection of the representations with the object and therewith their objective validity and on which rests even the possibility of the understanding. Kant distinguishes this unity from the subjective unity of consciousness, the unity of representation whereby I am conscious of a manifold as either simultaneous or successive, this being dependent on empirical conditions. On the other hand, the principles of the objective determination of notions are, he says, to be derived solely from the principle of the transcendental unity of apperception. Through the categories which are these objective determinations, the manifold of given representations is so determined as to be brought into the unity of consciousness. According to this Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 82 exposition, the unity of the notion is that whereby something is not a mere mode of feeling, an intuition, or even a mere representation, but is an object, and this objective unity is the unity of the ego with itself. In point of fact, the comprehension of an object consists in nothing else than that the ego makes it its own, pervades it and brings it into its own form, that is, into the universality that is immediately a determinateness, or a determinateness that is immediately universality. As intuited or even in ordinary conception, the object is still something external and alien. When it is comprehended, the being−in−and−for−self which it possesses in intuition and pictorial thought is transformed into a positedness; the I in thinking it pervades it. § 1294 But it is only as it is in thought that the object is truly in and for itself; in intuition or ordinary conception it is only an Appearance. Thought sublates the immediacy with which the object at first confronts us and thus converts the object into a positedness; but this its positedness is its being−in−and−for−self, or its objectivity. The object therefore has its objectivity in the Notion and this is the unity of self−consciousness into which it has been received; consequently its objectivity, or the Notion, is itself none other than the nature of self−consciousness, has no other moments or determinations than the I itself. § 1295 Thus we are justified by a cardinal principle of the Kantian philosophy in referring to the nature of the I in order to learn what the Notion is. But conversely, it is necessary for this purpose to have grasped the Notion of the I as stated above. If we cling to the mere representation of the I as it floats before our ordinary consciousness, then the I is only the simple thing, also called soul, in which the Notion inheres as a possession or property. This representation which makes no attempt to comprehend either the I or the Notion cannot serve to facilitate or bring nearer the comprehension of the Notion. § 1296 The Kantian exposition cited above contains two other features which concern the Notion and necessitate some further observations In the first place, the stage of the understanding is supposed to be preceded by the stages of feeling and intuition, and it is an essential proposition of the Kantian transcendental philosophy that without intuitions notions are empty and are valid solely as relations of the manifold given by intuition. Secondly, the Notion has been declared to be the objective element of knowledge, and as such, the truth. But on the other hand, the Notion is taken as something merely subjective from which we cannot extract reality, by which is to be understood objectivity, since reality is contrasted with subjectivity; and, in general, the Notion and the logical element are declared to be something merely formal which, since it abstracts from the content, does not contain truth. § 1297 Now, in the first place, as regards the relation of the understanding or the Notion to the stages presupposed by it, the form of these stages is determined by the particular science under consideration. In our science, that of pure logic, these stages are being and essence. In psychology the antecedent stages are feeling and intuition, and then ideation generally. In the phenomenology of spirit, which is the doctrine of consciousness, the ascent to the understanding is through the stages of sensuous consciousness and then perception. Kant presupposes only feeling and intuition. How incomplete to begin with this scale of stages is is revealed by the fact that he himself adds as an appendix to the transcendental logic or doctrine of the understanding a treatise on the concepts of reflection a sphere lying between intuition and the understanding or being and the Notion. § 1298 Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 83 About these stages themselves it must be remarked, first of all, that the forms of intuition, ideation and the like belong to the self−conscious spirit which, as such, does not fall to be considered in the science of logic. It is true that the pure determinations of being, essence and the Notion constitute the ground plan and the inner simple framework of the forms of the spirit; spirit as intuiting and also as sensuous consciousness is in the form of immediate being; and, similarly, spirit as ideating and as perceiving has risen from being to the stage of essence or reflection. But these concrete forms as little concern the science of logic as do the concrete forms assumed by the logical categories in nature, which would be space and time, then space and time self−filled with a content as inorganic nature, and lastly, organic nature. § 1299 Similarly here, too, the Notion is to be regarded not as the act of the self−conscious understanding, not as the subjective understanding, but as the Notion in its own absolute character which constitutes a stage of nature as well as of spirit. Life, or organic nature, is the stage of nature at which the Notion emerges, but as blind, as unaware of itself and unthinking; the Notion that is self−conscious and thinks pertains solely to spirit. But the logical form of the Notion is independent of its non−spiritual, and also of its spiritual, shapes. The necessary premonition on this point has already been given in the Introduction. It is a point that must not wait to be established within logic itself but must be cleared up before that science is begun. § 1300 Now whatever may be the forms of the stages which precede the Notion, we come secondly to the relation in which the Notion is thought to these forms. The conception of this relation both in ordinary psychology and in the Kantian transcendental philosophy is that the empirical material, the manifold of intuition and representation, first exists on its own account, and that then the understanding approaches it, brings unity into it and by abstraction raises it to the form of universality. The understanding is in this way an intrinsically empty form which, on the one hand, obtains a reality through the said given content and, on the other hand, abstracts from that content, that is to say, lets it drop as something useless, but useless only for the Notion. In both these actions the Notion is not the independent factor, not the essential and true element of the prior given material; on the contrary, it is the material that is regarded as the absolute reality, which cannot be extracted from the Notion. § 1301 Now it must certainly be admitted that the Notion as such is not yet complete, but must rise to the Idea which alone is the unity of the Notion and reality; and this must be shown in the sequel to be the spontaneous outcome of the nature of the Notion itself. For the reality which the Notion gives itself must not be received by it as something external but must, in accordance with the requirement of the science, be derived from the Notion itself. But the truth is that it is not the material given by intuition and representation that ought to be vindicated as the real in contrast to the Notion. People often say, 'It is only a notion,' contrasting the notion not only with the Idea but with sensuous, spatial and temporal, palpable reality as something more excellent than the Notion; and then the abstract is held to be of less account than the concrete because it lacks so much of this kind of material. In this view, to abstract means to select from the concrete object for our subjective purposes this or that mark without thereby detracting from the worth and status of the many other properties and features left out of account; on the contrary, these as real retain their validity completely unimpaired, only they are left yonder, on the other side; thus it is only the inability of the understanding to assimilate such wealth that compels it to content itself with the impoverished abstraction. Now to regard the given material of intuition and the manifold of representation as the real in contrast to what is thought, to the Notion, is a view, the abandonment of which is not only a condition of philosophising but is already presupposed by religion; for how can there be any need for religion, how can religion have any meaning, if the fleeting and superficial phenomena of the world of sensuous particulars are still regarded as the truth? But philosophy gives a Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 84 reasoned insight into the true state of the case with regard to the reality of sensuous being; it assumes the stages of feeling and intuition as precedent to the understanding in so far as they are conditions of its genesis, but only in the sense that it is conditioned by their reality. Abstract thinking, therefore, is not to be regarded as a mere setting aside of the sensuous material, the reality of which is not thereby impaired; rather is it the sublating and reduction of that material as mere phenomenal appearance to the essential, which is manifested only in the Notion. § 1302 Of course, if what is taken up into the Notion from the concrete phenomenon is to serve only as a mark or sign, it certainly may be any mere random sensuous particular determination of the object, selected from the others on the basis of any random external interest and of a similar kind and nature as the rest. § 1303 A capital misunderstanding which prevails on this point is that the natural principle or the beginning which forms the starting point in the natural evolution or in the history of the developing individual, is regarded as the truth, and the first in the Notion. Now in the order of nature, intuition or being are undoubtedly first, or are the condition for the Notion, but they are not on that account the absolutely unconditioned; on the contrary, their reality is sublated in the Notion and with it, too, the illusory show they possessed of being the conditioning reality. When it is a question, not of truth but merely of history, as in pictorial and phenomenal thinking, we need not of course go beyond merely narrating that we start with feelings and intuitions and that from the manifold of these the understanding extracts a universality or an abstraction and naturally requires for this purpose the said substrate of feelings and intuitions which, in this process of abstraction, remains for representation in the same complete reality with which it first presented itself. But philosophy is not meant to be a narration of happenings but a cognition of what is true in them, and further, on the basis of this cognition, to comprehend that which, in the narrative, appears as a mere happening. § 1304 If the superficial conception of what the Notion is, leaves all manifoldness outside the Notion and attributes to the latter only the form of abstract universality or the empty identity of reflection, we can at once appeal to the fact that quite apart from the view here propounded, the statement or definition of a notion expressly includes not only the genus, which itself is, properly speaking, more than a purely abstract universality, but also the specific determinateness. If one would but reflect attentively on the meaning of this fact, one would see that differentiation must be regarded as an equally essential moment of the Notion. Kant has introduced this consideration by the extremely important thought that there are synthetic judgements a priori. This original synthesis of apperception is one of the most profound principles for speculative development; it contains the beginning of a true apprehension of the nature of the Notion and is completely opposed to that empty identity or abstract universality which is not within itself a synthesis. The further development, however, does not fulfil the promise of the beginning. The very expression synthesis easily recalls the conception of an external unity and a mere combination of entities that are intrinsically separate. Then, again, the Kantian philosophy has not got beyond the psychological reflex of the Notion and has reverted once more to the assertion that the Notion is permanently conditioned by a manifold of intuition. It has declared intellectual cognition and experience to be a phenomenal content, not because the categories themselves are only finite but, on the ground of a psychological idealism, because they are merely determinations originating in self−consciousness. It is in keeping with this standpoint, too, that the Notion without the manifold of intuition is again declared to be empty and devoid of content despite the fact that it is a synthesis a priori; as such, it surely does contain determinateness and difference within itself. Moreover, since the determinateness is that of the Notion and therefore absolute determinateness, individuality, the Notion is the ground and source of all finite determinateness and manifoldness. Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 85 § 1305 The merely formal position that the Notion holds as understanding is fully confirmed in the Kantian exposition of what reason is. In reason, the highest stage of thought, one ought to have expected the Notion to lose the conditionedness in which it still appears at the stage of understanding and to attain to perfect truth. But this expectation is disappointed. For Kant defines the relation of reason to the categories as merely dialectical and, indeed, takes the result of this dialectic to be the infinite nothing −− just that and nothing more. § 1306 Consequently, the infinite unity of reason, too, is still deprived of the synthesis, and with it the beginning referred to above of a speculative, truly infinite Notion; reason becomes the familiar, wholly formal, merely regulative unity of the systematic employment of the understanding. It is declared to be an abuse when logic, which is supposed to be merely a canon of judgment, is regarded as an organon for the production of objective insights. The notions of reason in which we could not but have an intimation of a higher power and a profounder significance, no longer possess a constitutive character as do the categories, they are mere Ideas; certainly, we are quite at liberty to use them, but by these intelligible entities in which all truth should be completely revealed, we are to understand nothing more than hypotheses, and to ascribe absolute truth to them would be the height of caprice and foolhardiness, for they do not occur in any experience. Would one ever have thought that philosophy would deny truth to intelligible entities because they lack the spatial and temporal material of the sensuous world? § 1307 Directly connected with this is the question of the point of view from which the Notion and the character of logic generally are to be considered, a question on which the Kantian philosophy holds the same view as is commonly taken: that is to say, in what relation do the Notion and the science of the Notion stand to truth itself. We have already quoted from the Kantian deduction of the categories that according to it the object, as that in which the manifold of intuition is unified, is this unity solely through the unity of self−consciousness. Here, therefore, the objectivity of thought is specifically enunciated, an identity of Notion and thing, which is truth. In the same way, it is also commonly admitted that when thinking appropriates a given object, this thereby suffers an alteration and is changed from something sensuous to something thought; and yet that not only is the essential nature of the object not affected by this alteration but that it is only in its Notion that it is in its truth, whereas in the immediacy in which it is given it is only appearance and a contingency; that the cognition that truly comprehends the object is the cognition of it as it is in and for itself, and that the Notion is its very objectivity. § 1308 But, on the other hand, it is equally maintained that we cannot after all, know things as they truly are in themselves and that truth is inaccessible to the cognitive powers of reason; that the aforesaid truth which consists in the unity of the object and the Notion is, after all, only Appearance, and this time, again on the ground that the content is only the manifold of intuition. On this point we have already remarked that, on the contrary, it is precisely in the Notion that this manifoldness, in so far as it pertains to intuition in contrast to the Notion, is sublated and that through the Notion the object is reduced to its non−contingent essential nature. The latter enters into the sphere of Appearance and for that very reason the Appearance is not devoid of essential being, but is a manifestation of essence. But the completely liberated manifestation of essence is the Notion § 1309 Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 86 These propositions of which we here remind the reader are not dogmatic assertions, for the reason that they are results that have issued from the entire immanent development of essence. The present standpoint to which this development has led is that the form of the absolute which is higher than being and essence is the Notion. Regarded from this aspect, the Notion has subjugated being and essence, which from other starting points include also feeling and intuition and representation, and which appeared as its antecedent conditions, and has proved itself to be their unconditioned ground. There now remains the second aspect, to the treatment of which this Third Book of the Logic is devoted, namely the exposition of how the Notion builds up in and from itself the reality that has vanished in it. It has therefore been freely admitted that the cognition that stops short at the Notion purely as such, is still incomplete and has only as yet arrived at abstract truth. But its incompleteness does not lie in its lack of that presumptive reality given in feeling and intuition but rather in the fact that the Notion has not yet given itself a reality of its own, a reality produced from its own resources. The demonstrated absoluteness of the Notion relatively to the material of experience and, more exactly, to the categories and concepts of reflection, consists in this, that this material as it appears apart from and prior to the Notion has no truth; this it has solely in its ideality or its identity with the Notion. The derivation of the real from it if we want to call it derivation, consists in the first place essentially in this, that the Notion in its formal abstraction reveals itself as incomplete and through its own immanent dialectic passes over into reality; but it does not fall back again onto a ready−made reality confronting it and take refuge in something which has shown itself to be the unessential element of Appearance because, having looked around for something better, it has failed to find it; on the contrary, it produces the reality from its own resources. It will always stand out as a marvel how the Kantian philosophy recognised the relation of thought to sensuous reality, beyond which it did not advance, as only a relative relation of mere Appearance, and perfectly well recognised and enunciated a higher unity of both in the Idea in general and, for example, in the Idea of an intuitive understanding, and yet stopped short at this relative relation and the assertion that the Notion is and remains utterly separate from reality thus asserting as truth what it declared to be finite cognition, and denouncing as an unjustified extravagance and a figment of thought what it recognised as truth and of which it established the specific notion. § 1310 Since it is primarily logic and not science generally with whose relation to truth we are here concerned, it must further be conceded that logic as the formal science cannot and should not contain that reality which is the content of the further parts of philosophy, namely, the philosophical sciences of nature and of spirit. These concrete sciences do, of course, present themselves in a more real form of the Idea than logic does; but this is not by turning back again to the reality abandoned by the consciousness which has risen above its mode as Appearance to the level of science, nor by reverting to the use of forms such as the categories and concepts of reflection, whose finitude and untruth have been demonstrated in the logic. On the contrary, logic exhibits the elevation of the Idea to that level from which it becomes the creator of nature and passes over to the form of a concrete immediacy whose Notion, however, breaks up this shape again in order to realise itself as concrete spirit. As contrasted with these concrete sciences (although these have and retain as their inner formative principle that same logical element, or the Notion, which had served is their archetype), logic is of course a formal science; but it is the science of the absolute form which is within itself a totality and contains the pure Idea of truth itself. This absolute form has in its own self its content or reality; the Notion, not being a trivial, empty identity, possesses in its moment of negativity or of absolute determining, the differentiated determinations; the content is simply and solely these determinations of the absolute form and nothing else a content posited by the absolute form itself and consequently also adequate to it. For this reason, this form is of quite another nature than logical form is ordinarily taken to be. It is already on its own account truth, since this content is adequate to its form, or the reality to its Notion; and it is the pure truth because the determinations of the content do not yet have the form of an absolute otherness or of absolute immediacy. When Kant, in connection with logic comes to discuss the old and famous question: what is truth? he first of all presents to the reader as a triviality the explanation of the term as the agreement of cognition with its object a definition of great, indeed of supreme, value. If we remember this definition in connection with the Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 87 fundamental assertion of transcendental idealism, that reason as cognitive is incapable of apprehending things−in−themselves, that reality lies absolutely outside the Notion, then it is at once evident that a reason such as this which is unable to put itself in agreement with its object, the things−in−themselves, and things−in−themselves that are not in agreement with the Notion of reason, the Notion that is not in agreement with reality, and a reality that does not agree with the Notion, are untrue conceptions. If Kant had considered the Idea of an intuitive understanding in the light of the above definition of truth, he would have treated that Idea which expresses the required agreement, not as a figment of thought but rather as the truth. § 1311 'What we require to know' Kant goes on to say, 'is a universal and sure criterion of any cognition whatever; it would be such a criterion as would be valid for all cognitions without distinction of their objects; but since with such a criterion abstraction would be made from all content of the cognition (relation to its object) and truth concerns precisely this content, it would be quite impossible and absurd to ask for a mark of the truth of this content of cognitions.' Here, the usual conception of the formal function of logic is expressed very definitely and the argument adduced has a very convincing air. But first of all it is to be observed that it usually happens with such formal ratiocination that it forgets in its discourse the very point on which it has based its argument and of which it is speaking. It is alleged that it would be absurd to ask for the criterion of the truth of the content of cognition; but according to the definition it is not the content that constitutes the truth, but the agreement of the content with the Notion. A content such as is here spoken of, without the Notion, is something notionless, and hence without essential being; certainly we cannot ask for the criterion of the truth of such a content, but for the very opposite reason; not, that is, because the content, as something notionless, is not the required agreement, but simply because it cannot be anything more than a mere truthless opinion. Let us leave on one side the content which causes the confusion here the confusion into which formalism falls whenever it sets out to explain something and which makes it say the opposite of what it intends and let us stop at the abstract view that logic is only formal and, in fact, abstracts from all content; we then have a one−sided cognition which is not to contain any object, an empty, blank form which therefore is no more an agreement for an agreement essentially requires two terms then it is truth. In the a priori synthesis of the Notion, Kant possessed a higher principle in which a duality in a unity could be cognised, a cognition, therefore, of what is required for truth; but the material of sense, the manifold of intuition, was too strong for him and he was unable to get away from it to a consideration of the Notion and the categories in and for themselves and to a speculative method of philosophising. § 1312 Logic being the science of the absolute form, this formal science, in order to be true, must possess in its own self a content adequate to its form; and all the more, since the formal element of logic is the pure form, and therefore the truth of logic must be the pure truth itself. Consequently this formal science must be regarded as possessing richer determinations and a richer content and as being infinitely more potent in its influence on the concrete than is usually supposed. The laws of logic by themselves (not counting the heterogeneous accretions of applied logic and the rest of the psychological and anthropological material) are commonly restricted, apart from the law of contradiction, to some meagre propositions concerning the conversion of judgements and the forms of syllogisms. Even here the forms which come up for treatment as well as their further modifications are only, as it were, historically taken up; they are not subjected to criticism to determine whether they are in and for themselves true. Thus, for example, the form of the positive judgement is accepted as something perfectly correct in itself, the question whether such a judgement is true depending solely on the content. Whether this form is in its own self a form of truth, whether the proposition it enunciates, the individual is a universal, is not inherently dialectical, is a question that no one thinks of investigating. It is straightway assumed that this judgement is, on its own account, capable of containing truth and that the proposition enunciated by any positive judgement is true, although it is directly evident that it lacks what is required by the definition of truth, namely, the agreement of the Notion and its object; if the Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 88 predicate, which here is the universal, is taken as the Notion, and the subject, which is the individual, is taken as the object, then the one does not agree with the other. But if the abstract universal which is the predicate falls short of constituting a Notion, for a Notion certainly implies something more, and if, too, a subject of this kind is not yet much more than a grammatical one, how should the judgement possibly contain truth seeing that either its Notion and object do not agree, or it lacks both Notion and object? On the contrary, then, what is impossible and absurd is to attempt to grasp the truth in such forms as the positive judgement and the judgement generally. Just as the Kantian philosophy did not consider the categories in and for themselves but declared them to be finite determinations incapable of containing truth, on the wrong ground that they are subjective forms of self−consciousness, still less did that philosophy subject to criticism the forms of the Notion which are the content of ordinary logic; on the contrary, it has adopted a portion of them, namely, the functions of judgement, for the determination of the categories and accepted them as valid presuppositions. Even if we are to see in logical forms nothing more than formal functions of thought, they would for that very reason be worthy of investigation to ascertain how far, on their own account, they correspond to the truth. A logic that does not perform this task can at most claim the value of a descriptive natural history of the phenomena of thinking just as they occur. It is an infinite merit of Aristotle, one that must fill us with the highest admiration for the powers of that genius, that he was the first to undertake this description. It is necessary however to go further and to ascertain both the systematic connection of these forms and their value. Division § 1313 The foregoing consideration of the Notion shows it to be the unity of being and essence. Essence is the first negation of being, which has thereby become illusory being; the Notion is the second negation or the negation of this negation, and is therefore being once more, but being that has been restored as the infinite mediation and negativity of being within itself. Consequently, being and essence in the Notion no longer have the same determination that they had as being and essence, nor are they merely in a unity such that each has an illusory being in the other. Therefore the Notion does not differentiate itself into these determinations. It is the truth of the relationship of substance in which being and essence achieve the fulfilment of their self−subsistence and their determination through each other. The truth of substantiality proved to be the substantial identity which is no less a positedness and only as such is substantial identity. The positedness is a determinate being and differentiation; consequently, in the Notion, being−in−and−for−itself has attained a true and adequate reality, for the positedness is itself being−in−and−for−itself. This positedness constitutes the difference of the Notion within itself; because the positedness is immediately being−in−and−for−itself, the different moments of the Notion are themselves the whole Notion, universal in their determinateness and identical with their negation. § 1314 This, now, is the very Notion of the Notion. But it is as yet only its Notion; or, this Notion is itself only the Notion. Because it is equally being−in−and−for−self and also a positedness, or the absolute substance that manifests the necessity of distinct substances as an identity, this identity must itself posit what it is. The moments of the movement of the relationship of substantiality through which the Notion has come to be and the reality thereby exhibited are still only in transition into the Notion; this reality does not yet possess the determination of being the Notion's own, self−evolved determination; it fell in the sphere of necessity; but the Notion's own determination can only be the result of its free determining, a determinate being in which the Notion is identical with itself, its moments also being Notions and posited by the Notion itself. § 1315 Science of Logic Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion 89 At first, therefore, the Notion is only in itself or implicitly the truth; because it is only something inner, it is equally only outer. It is at first simply an immediate and in this guise its moments have the form of immediate, fixed determinations. It appears as the determinate Notion, as the sphere of the mere understanding. Because this form of immediacy is still inadequate to the nature of the Notion, for this is free, being in relation only with itself, it is an external form in which the Notion cannot count as a being−in−and−for−self, but only as something posited or subjective. The Notion in the guise of immediacy constitutes the point of view for which the Notion is a subjective thinking, a reflection external to the subject matter. This stage, therefore, constitutes subjectivity, or the formal Notion. Its externality is manifested in the fixed being of its determinations each of which appears independently as an isolated, qualitative something which is only externally related to its other. But the identity of the Notion, which is precisely their inner or subjective essence, sets them dialectically in movement, with the result that their separatedness vanishes and with it the separation of the Notion from the object, and there emerges as their truth the totality which is the objective Notion. § 1316 Secondly, the Notion in its objectivity is the subject matter in and for itself. Through its necessary, progressive determination the formal Notion makes itself its subject matter and in this way is rid of the relation of subjectivity and externality to the object. Or, conversely, objectivity is the real Notion that has emerged from its inwardness and passed over into determinate being. In this identity with the object, the Notion thus has a free determinate being of its own. But this freedom is still only an immediate, not yet a negative, freedom. As one with the object, the Notion is submerged in it; its distinct moments are objective existences in which it is itself again only the inner. As the soul [Seele] of objective reality it must give itself the form of subjectivity which, as formal Notion, belonged to it immediately; thus, in the form of the free Notion, a form which in objectivity it still lacked, it opposes itself to that objectivity and in so doing makes the identity with it which, as objective Notion it possesses in and for itself, also a posited identity. § 1317 In this consummation in which it has the form of freedom even in its objectivity, the adequate Notion is the Idea. Reason, which is the sphere of the Idea, is the self−revealed truth in which the Notion possesses the realisation that is wholly adequate to it, and is free, inasmuch as it cognises this its objective world in its subjectivity and its subjectivity in its objective world. Subjectivity − next section The Doctrine of the Notion Section One: Subjectivity § 1318 The Notion is, in the first instance, formal, the Notion in its beginning or the immediate Notion. In the immediate unity, its difference or positedness is itself at first simple and only an illusory being [Schein], so that the moments of the difference are immediately the totality of the Notion and are simply the Notion as such. § 1319 Secondly, however, because it is absolute negativity, it sunders itself and posits itself as the negative or as the Science of Logic The Doctrine of the Notion Section One: Subjectivity 90 other of itself; and further, because as yet it is only the immediate Notion, this positing or differentiation is characterised by the fact that the moments become indifferent to one another and each becomes for itself; in this partition, its unity is still only an external connection. As such connection of its moments, which are posited as self−subsistent and indifferent, it is Judgment. § 1320 Thirdly, though the judgment does contain the unity of the Notion that has vanished into its self−subsistent moments, yet this unity is not posited. It becomes so through the dialectical movement of the judgment, through which it has become the Syllogism, the Notion posited in its completeness; for in the syllogism there is posited not only the moments of the Notion as self−subsistent extremes, but also their mediating unity. § 1321 But since this unity itself as the unifying middle, and the moments as self−subsistent extremes, are in the first instance immediately opposed to one another, this contradictory relationship that occurs in the formal syllogism sublates itself, and the completeness of the Notion passes over into the unity of the totality, the subjectivity of the Notion into its Objectivity. Chapter 1 The Notion § 1322 Understanding is the term usually employed to express the faculty of notions; as so used, it is distinguished from the faculty of judgment and the faculty of syllogisms, of the formal reason But it is with reason that it is especially contrasted; in that case, however, it does not signify the faculty of the notion in general, but of determinate notions, and the idea prevails that the notion is only a determinate notion. When the understanding in this signification is distinguished from the formal faculty of judgment and from the formal reason, it is to be taken as the faculty of the single determinate notion. For the judgment and the syllogism or reason are, as formal, only a product of the understanding since they stand under the form of the abstract determinateness of the Notion. Here, however, the Notion emphatically does not rank as something merely abstractly determinate; consequently, the understanding is to be distinguished from reason only in the sense that the former is merely the faculty of the notion in general. § 1323 This universal Notion, which we have now to consider here, contains the three moments: universality, particularity and individuality. The difference and the determinations which the Notion gives itself in its distinguishing, constitute the side which was previously called positedness. As this is identical in the Notion with being−in−and−for−self, each of these moments is no less the whole Notion than it is a determinate Notion and a determination of the Notion. § 1324 In the first instance, it is the pure Notion or the determination of universality. But the pure or universal Notion is also only a determinate or particular Notion, which takes its place alongside other Notions. Because the Notion is a totality, and therefore in its universality or pure identical self−relation is essentially a determining and a distinguishing, it therefore contains within itself the standard by which this form of its self−identity, in pervading and embracing all the moments, no less immediately determines itself to be only the universal over against the distinguishedness of the moments. Science of Logic Chapter 1 The Notion 91 Secondly, the Notion is thereby posited as this particular or determinate Notion, distinct from others. Thirdly, individuality is the Notion reflecting itself out of the difference into absolute negativity. This is, at the same time, the moment in which it has passed out of its identity into its otherness, and becomes the judgment. A The Universal Notion § 1325 The pure Notion is the absolutely infinite, unconditioned and free. It is here, at the outset of the discussion which has the Notion for its content, that we must look back once more at its genesis. Essence is the outcome of being, and the Notion, the outcome of essence, therefore also of being. But this becoming has the significance of a self−repulsion, so that it is rather the outcome which is the unconditioned and original. Being, in its transition into essence, has become an illusory being or a positedness, and becoming or transition into an other has become a positing; and conversely, the positing or reflection of essence has sublated itself and has restored itself as a being that is not posited, that is original. The Notion is the interfusion of these moments, namely, qualitative and original being is such only as a positing, only as a return−into−self, and this pure reflection−into−self is a sheer becoming−other or determinateness which, consequently, is no less an infinite, self−relating determinateness. § 1326 Thus the Notion is, in the first instance, the absolute self−identity that is such only as the negation of negation or as the infinite unity of the negativity with itself. This pure relation of the Notion to itself, which is this relation by positing itself through the negativity, is the universality of the Notion. § 1327 As universality is the utterly simple determination, it does not seem capable of any explanation; for an explanation must concern itself with definitions and distinctions and must apply predicates to its object, and to do this to what is simple, would alter rather than explain it. But the simplicity which constitutes the very nature of the universal is such that, through absolute negativity, it contains within itself difference and determinateness in the highest degree. Being is simple as immediate being; for that reason it is only something meant or intended and we cannot say of it what it is; therefore, it is one with its other, with non−being. Its Notion is just this, to be a simplicity that immediately vanishes in its opposite; it is becoming. The universal, on the contrary, is that simplicity which, because it is the Notion, no less possesses within itself the richest content. § 1328 First, therefore, it is the simple relation to itself; it is only within itself. Secondly, however, this identity is within itself absolute mediation, but it is not something mediated. The universal that is mediated, namely, the abstract universal that is opposed to the particular and the individual, this will be discussed later when we are dealing with the specific notion. Yet even the abstract universal involves this, that in order to obtain it we are required to leave out other determinations of the concrete. These determinations, simply as such, are negations; equally, too, the omitting of them is a negating. So that even with the abstraction, we have the negation of the negation. But this double negation is conceived of as though it were external to the abstraction, as though not only were the other omitted properties of the concrete distinct from the one retained, which is the content of the abstract universal, but also as though this operation of omitting the other properties and retaining the one were a process outside the properties themselves. To such an externality in Science of Logic Chapter 1 The Notion 92 face of that movement, the universal has not yet determined itself; it is still within itself that absolute mediation which is, precisely, the negation of the negation or absolute negativity. § 1329 By virtue of this original unity it follows, in the first place, that the first negative, or the determination, is not a limitation for the universal which, on the contrary, maintains itself therein and is positively identical with itself. The categories of being were, as Notions, essentially these identities of the determinations with themselves in their limitation or otherness; but this identity was only in itself the Notion; it was not yet manifested. Consequently, the qualitative determination as such was lost in its other and had for its truth a determination distinct from itself. The universal, on the contrary, even when it posits itself in a determination, remains therein what it is. It is the soul [Seele] of the concrete which it indwells, unimpeded and equal to itself in the manifoldness and diversity of the concrete. It is not dragged into the process of becoming, but continues itself through that process undisturbed and possesses the power of unalterable, undying self−preservation. § 1330 But even so, it does not merely show, or have an illusory being, in its other, like the determination of reflection; this, as a correlate, is not merely self−related but is a positive relating of itself to its other in which it manifests itself; but, in the first instance, it only shows in it, and this illusory being of each in the other, or their reciprocal determining, along with their self−dependence, has the form of an external act. The universal, on the contrary, is posited as the essential being of its determination, as the latter's own positive nature. For the determination that constitutes its negative is, in the Notion, simply and solely a positedness; in other words, it is, at the same time, essentially only the negative of the negative, and is only as this identity of the negative with itself, which is the universal. Thus the universal is also the substance of its determinations; but in such wise that what was a contingency for substance, is the Notion's own self−mediation, its own immanent reflection. But this mediation which, in the first instance, raises contingency to necessity, is the manifested relation; the Notion is not the abyss of formless substance, or necessity as the inner identity of things or states distinct from, and limiting, one another; on the contrary, as absolute negativity, it is the shaper and creator, and because the determination is not a limitation but is just as much utterly sublated, or posited, the illusory being is now manifestation, the manifestation of the identical. § 1331 The universal is therefore free power; it is itself and takes its other within its embrace, but without doing violence to it; on the contrary, the universal is, in its other, in peaceful communion with itself. We have called it free power, but it could also be called free love and boundless blessedness, for it bears itself towards its other as towards its own self; in it, it has returned to itself. § 1332 We have just mentioned determinateness, although the Notion, being as yet only the universal and only self−identical, has not yet advanced to that stage. However, we cannot speak of the universal apart from determinateness which to be more precise is particularity and individuality, for the universal, in its absolute negativity, contains determinateness in and for itself. The determinateness, therefore, is not introduced from outside when we speak of it in connection with the universal. As negativity in general or in accordance with the first, immediate negation, the universal contains determinateness generally as particularity; as the second negation, that is, as negation of the negation, it is absolute determinateness or individuality and concreteness. The universal is thus the totality of the Notion; it is a concrete, and far from being empty, it has through its Notion a content, and a content in which it not only maintains itself but one which is its own and immanent in Science of Logic Chapter 1 The Notion 93 it. We can, indeed, abstract from the content: but in that case we do not obtain the universal of the Notion but only the abstract universal, which is an isolated, imperfect moment of the Notion and has no truth. § 1333 More precisely, the universal shows itself as this totality as follows. In so far as it contains determinateness, it is not merely the first negation, but also the reflection of this negation into itself. Taken expressly with this first negation, it is a particular, and it is as such that we are soon to consider it; but in this determinateness it is essentially still a universal; this side we have here still to consider. For determinateness, being in the Notion, is the total reflection, the two−fold illusory being which on the one hand has an illusory reference outwards, the reflection−into−other, and on the other hand has an illusory reference inwards, the reflection−into−self. The former reflection involves distinction from an other; from this standpoint, the universal possesses a particularity which has its resolution in a higher universal. Now even though it is merely a relative universal, it does not lose its character of universal; it preserves itself in its determinateness, not merely as though in its connection with the determinateness it remained indifferent to it −− for then it would be merely compounded with it but so that it is what we have just called the illusory reference inwards. The determinateness, as determinate Notion, is bent back into itself out of the externality; it is the Notion's own immanent character, which is an essential character by virtue of the fact that, in being taken up into the universality and pervaded by it, it equally pervades the universality, being of like compass and identical with it; it is the character that belongs to the genus as the determinateness that is not separated from the universal. Accordingly, the limitation is not outward−going but positive, for the Notion, through its universality, stands in free relation to itself. Thus even the determinate Notion remains within itself infinitely free Notion. § 1334 But in regard to the other side, in which the genus is limited by its specific character, it has been observed that this, as a lower genus, has its resolution in a higher universal. The latter, in its turn, can also be grasped as genus but as a more abstract one; but it always pertains only to that side of the determinate Notion which has a reference outwards. The truly higher universal is that in which this outward−going side is taken back into the universal, the second negation, in which the determinateness is present simply as posited or as illusory being. Life, ego, spirit, absolute Notion, are not universals merely in the sense of higher genera, but are concretes whose determinatenesses, too, are not species or lower genera but genera which, in their reality, are absolutely self−contained and self−fulfilled. In so far as life, ego, finite spirit are, as they certainly are, also only determinate Notions, their absolute resolution is in that universal which as truly absolute Notion is to be grasped as the Idea of infinite spirit, whose posited being is infinite, transparent reality wherein it contemplates its creation, and in this creation its own self. § 1335 The true, infinite universal which, in itself, is as much particularity as individuality, we have next to consider as particularity. It determines itself freely; the process by which it makes itself finite is not a transition, for this occurs only in the sphere of being; it is creative power as the absolute negativity which relates itself to its own self. As such, it differentiates itself internally, and this is a determining, because the differentiation is one with the universality. Accordingly, the universal is a process in which it posits the differences themselves as universal and self−related. They thereby become fixed, isolated differences. The isolated subsistence of the finite which earlier was determined as its being−for−self, and also as thinghood, as substance, is, in its truth universality, the form with which the infinite Notion clothes its differences −− a form that is, in fact, one of its own differences. Herein consists the creative power of the Notion, a power which is to be comprehended only in this, the Notion's innermost core. B The Particular Notion Science of Logic Chapter 1 The Notion 94 § 1336 We have seen that the determinateness of the particular is simple as principle, but it is also simple as moment of the totality −− as a determinateness opposed to the other determinateness. The Notion, in determining or distinguishing itself, is negatively directed against its unity and gives itself the form of one of its ideal moments, that of being: as a determinate Notion, it has a determinate Being in general. But this Being no longer signifies bare immediacy but Universality −− immediacy which through absolute mediation is equal to itself and equally contains the other moment, essential being or reflection. This Universality with which the determinate moment is clothed is abstract Universality. The particular has Universality within it as its essential being; but, in so far as the determinateness of the difference is posited, and thereby has Being, Universality is a form assumed by the difference, and the determinateness as such is the content. The Universality becomes form in so far as the difference is present as the essential moment, just as, on the contrary, in the purely universal it is present only as absolute negativity, not as difference which posited as such. © § 1337 Connected with the above is the reason why latterly the Understanding has been so lightly esteemed and ranked as inferior to Reason; it is the fixity which it imparts to the determinatenesses, and hence to finite determinations. This fixity consists in the form of abstract Universality which has just been considered: through it they become immutable. For qualitative determinateness, and also determinations of reflection, are essentially limited, and, through their limitation, have a relation to their other; hence the necessity of transition and passing away. But universality which they possess in the understanding gives them the form of reflection−into−self by which they are freed from the relation−to−other and have become imperishable. Now though in the pure Notion this eternity belongs to its nature, yet its abstract determinations are eternal essentialities only in respect of their form; but their content is at variance with this form; therefore they are not truth, or imperishable. Their content is at variance with the form, because it is not determinateness itself as universal; that is, it is not totality of the Notion's difference, or not itself the whole form; but the form of the limited understanding is itself the imperfect form, namely, abstract universality. But further, we must recognise the infinite force of the understanding in splitting the concrete into abstract determinatenesses and plumbing the depth of difference, the force that at the same time is alone the power that effects their transition. § 1338 Since, therefore, understanding exhibits the infinite force which determines the universal, or conversely, imparts through the form of Universality a fixity and subsistence to the determinateness that is in and for itself transitory; then it is not the fault of understanding if no further progress is made beyond this point. It is a subjective impotence of reason which adopts these determinatenesses in their fixity, and which is unable to bring them back to their unity through the dialectical force opposed to this abstract universality, in other words, through their own peculiar nature or through their Notion. The understanding does indeed give them, so to speak, a rigidity of being such as they do not possess in the sphere of quality and the sphere of reflection; but at the same time it spiritually impregnates them and so sharpens them, that just at this extreme point alone they acquire the capability to dissolve themselves and pass over into their opposite. The highest maturity, the highest stage, which anything can attain is that in which its downfall begins. The fixity of the determinateness into which the understanding seems to run, the form of the imperishable, is that of self−relating universality. But this belongs properly to the Notion; and consequently in this universality is to be found expressed, and infinitely close at hand, the dissolution of the finite. This Universality directly refutes the determinateness of the finite and expresses its incongruity with the universality. Or rather, the adequacy of the finite is already to hand; the abstract determinate is posited as one with the universality, and for that very reason is posited as not for itself −− for then it would only be a determinate −− but only as unity Science of Logic Chapter 1 The Notion 95 of itself and the universal, that is, as Notion. © C The Individual § 1339 1. In the first instance, therefore, individuality appears as the reflection of the Notion out of its determinateness into itself. It is the self−mediation of the Notion in so far as its otherness has made itself into an other again, whereby the Notion has reinstated itself as self−identical, but in the determination of absolute negativity. The negative in the universal whereby this is a particular, was defined above as a two−fold illusory being: in so far as the negative is an illusory being within the universal, the particular remains a universal; through the reference of the illusory being outwards it is a determinate; the return of this side into the universal is two−fold: either through abstraction which lets drop the particular and rises to the higher and the highest genus, or else through the individuality to which the universal in the determinateness itself descends. Here is where the false path branches off and abstraction strays from the highway of the Notion and forsakes the truth. Its higher and highest universal to which it raises itself is only the surface, which becomes ever more destitute of content; the individuality it despises is the profundity in which the Notion seizes itself and is posited as Notion. © § 1340 Universality and particularity appeared, on the one hand, as moments of the becoming of individuality. But it has already been shown that they are in themselves the total Notion, and consequently in individuality do not pass over into an other, but that in individuality there is only posited that they are in and for themselves.  It is an abstract universal in so far as this sublating is an external act and so a dropping of the determinateness. § 1341 Life, Spirit, God −− the pure Notion itself, are beyond the grasp of abstraction, because it deprives its products of singularity, of the principle of individuality and personality, and so arrives at nothing but universalities devoid of life and spirit, colour and content. § 1342 Yet the unity of the Notion is so indissoluble that even these products of abstraction, though they are supposed to drop individuality are, on the contrary, individuals themselves. Abstraction raises the concrete into universality in which, however, the universal is grasped only as a determinate universality; and this is precisely the individuality that has shown itself to be self−related determinateness. Abstraction, therefore, is a sundering of the concrete and an isolating of its determinations; through it only single properties and moments are seized; for its product must contain what it is itself. But the difference between this individuality of its products and the Notion's individuality is that, in the former, the individual as content and the universal as form are distinct from one another −− just because the former is not present as absolute form, as the Notion itself, or the latter is not present as the totality of form. However this more detailed consideration shows that the abstract product itself is a unity of the individual content and abstract universality, and is, therefore, a concrete −− and the opposite of what it aims to be. § 1343 Science of Logic Chapter 1 The Notion 96 2. But Individuality is not only the return of the Notion into itself; but immediately its loss. Through individuality, where the Notion is internal to itself, it becomes external to itself and enters into actuality. Abstraction which, as the soul of individuality is the relation of the negative to the negative; and, as we have shown not external to the universal and the particular but immanent in them; and through it they are concrete, content, an individual. But as this negativity, individuality is the determinate determinateness, is differentiation as such; through this reflection of the difference into itself, the difference becomes fixed; it is only through individuality that the determining of the particular takes place, for individuality is that abstraction which simply as individuality, is now posited abstraction. § 1344 The individual, therefore, as self−related negativity, is immediate identity of the negative with itself; it is a being−for−self. Or it is the abstraction that determines the Notion, according to its ideal moment of being, as an immediate. In this way, the individual is a qualitative one or this. With this quality it is, first, repulsion of itself from itself, whereby the many other ones are presupposed; secondly, it is now a negative relation towards these presupposed others; and, the individual is in so far exclusive. § 1345 When one understands by the universal, that which is common to several individuals, one is starting from the indifferent subsistence of these individuals and confounding the immediacy of being with the determination of the Notion. The lowest possible conception of the universal in its connection with the individual is this external relation of it as merely a common element. © Chapter 2 The Judgment § 1346 The judgment is the determinateness of the Notion posited in the Notion itself. The Notion's determinations, or what we have seen to be the same thing, the determinate Notions, have already been considered on their own; but this consideration was more a subjective reflection or subjective abstraction. But the Notion is itself this abstractive process, the opposing of its determinations is its own determining activity. The judgment is this positing of the determinate Notions by the Notion itself. Judging is thus another function than comprehension, or rather it is the other function of the Notion as the determining of the Notion by itself, and the further progress of the judgment into the diversity of judgments is the progressive determination of the Notion. What kinds of determinate Notions there are, and how these determinations of the Notion are arrived at, has to reveal itself in the judgment. § 1347 The judgment can therefore be called the proximate realisation of the Notion, inasmuch as reality denotes in general entry into existence as a determinate being. More precisely, the nature of this realisation has presented itself in such a manner that, on the one hand, the moments of the Notion through its reflection−into−self or its individuality are self−subsistent totalities, while on the other hand the unity of the Notion is their relation. The determinations reflected into themselves are determinate totalities, no less essentially in their indifferent and disconnected subsistence as through their reciprocal mediation with one another. The determining itself is only totality in that it contains these totalities and their connection. This totality is the judgment. It contains, therefore, first, the two self−subsistents which are called subject and predicate. What each is cannot yet really be said; they are still indeterminate, for it is only through the judgment that they are to be determined. The judgment, being the Notion as determinate, the only distinction Science of Logic Chapter 2 The Judgment 97 present is the general one that the judgment contains the determinate Notion over against the still indeterminate Notion. The subject can therefore, in the first instance, be taken in relation to the predicate as the individual over against the universal, or even as the particular over against the universal, or as the individual over against the particular; so far, they confront each other only in general, as the more determinate and the more universal. § 1348 It is therefore appropriate and necessary to have these names, subject and predicate for the determinations of the judgment; as names, they are something indeterminate that still awaits its determination, and are, therefore, no more than names. It is partly for this reason that the Notion determinations themselves could not be used for the two sides of the judgment; but a stronger reason is because the nature of the Notion determination is emphatically to be, not something abstract and fixed, but to have and to posit its opposite within it; since the sides of the judgment are themselves Notions and therefore the totality of its determinations, each side must run through all these determinations and exhibit them within itself, whether in abstract or concrete form. Now in order to fix the sides of the judgment in a general way when their determination is altered, those names are most serviceable which remain the same throughout the alteration. The name however stands over against the matter in hand or the Notion; this distinction presents itself in the judgment as such; now the subject is in general the determinate, and is therefore more that which immediately is, whereas the predicate expresses the universal, the essential nature or the Notion; therefore the subject as such is, in the first instance, only a kind of name; for what it is is first enunciated by the predicate which contains being in the sense of the Notion. In the question: what is this? or: what kind of a plant is this? what is often understood by the being enquired after, is merely the name, and when this is learned one is satisfied and now knows what the thing is. This is being in the sense of the subject. But the Notion, or at least the essence and the universal in general, is first given by the predicate, and it is this that is asked for in the sense of the judgment. Consequently, God, spirit, nature, or whatever it may be, is as the subject of a judgment at first only the name; what such a subject is as regards its Notion is first enunciated in the predicate. When enquiry is made as to the kind of predicate belonging to such subject, the act of judgment necessarily implies an underlying Notion. But this Notion is first enunciated by the predicate itself. Properly speaking, therefore, it is the mere general idea that constitutes the presupposed meaning of the subject and that leads to the naming of it; and in doing this it is contingent and a historical fact, what is, or is not, to be understood by a name. So many disputes about whether a predicate does or does not belong to a certain subject are therefore nothing more than verbal disputes, because they start from the form above mentioned; what lies at the base is so far nothing more than the name. § 1349 We have now to examine, secondly, how the relation of subject and predicate in the judgment is determined and how subject and predicate themselves are at first determined through this very relation. The judgment has in general for its sides totalities which to begin with are essentially self−subsistent. The unity of the Notion is, therefore, at first only a relation of self−subsistents; not as yet the concrete and pregnant unity that has returned into itself from this reality, but only a unity outside which the self−subsistent sides persist as extremes that are not sublated in it. Now consideration of the judgment can begin from the original unity of the Notion, or from the self−subsistence of the extremes. The judgment is the self−diremption of the Notion; this unity is, therefore, the ground from which the consideration of the judgment in accordance with its true objectivity begins. It is thus the original division [Teilung] of what is originally one; thus the word Urteil refers to what judgment is in and for itself. But regarded from the side of externality, the Notion is present in the judgment as Appearance, since its moments therein attain self−subsistence, and it is on this external side that ordinary thinking tends to fasten. § 1350 Science of Logic Chapter 2 The Judgment 98 From this subjective standpoint, then, subject and predicate are considered to be complete, each on its own account, apart from the other: the subject as an object that would exist even if it did not possess this predicate; the predicate as a universal determination that would exist even if it did not belong to this subject. From this standpoint, the act of judgment involves the reflection, whether this or that predicate which is in someone's head can and should be attached to the object which exists on its own account outside; the very act of judging consists in this, that only through it is a predicate combined with a subject, so that, if this combination did not take place, each on its own would still remain what it is, the latter an existent object, the former an idea in someone's head. The predicate which is attached to the subject should, however, also belong to it, that is, be in and for itself identical with it. Through this significance of attachment, the subjective meaning of judgment and the indifferent, outer subsistence of subject and predicate are sublated again: this action is good; the copula indicates that the predicate belongs to the being of the subject and is not merely externally combined with it. In the grammatical sense, that subjective relationship in which one starts from the indifferent externality of the subject and predicate has its complete validity; for it is words that are here externally combined. We may take this opportunity of remarking, too, that though a proposition has a subject and predicate in the grammatical sense, this does not make it a judgment. The latter requires that the predicate be related to the subject as one Notion determination to another, and therefore as a universal to a particular or individual. If a statement about a particular subject only enunciates something individual, then this is a mere proposition, For example, 'Aristotle died at the age of 73, in the fourth year of the 115th Olympiad,' is a mere proposition, not a judgment. It would partake of the nature of a judgment only if doubt had been thrown on one of the circumstances, the date of the death, or the age of that philosopher, and the given figures had been asserted on the strength of some reason or other. In that case, these figures would be taken as something universal, as time that still subsists apart from this particular content of the death of Aristotle, whether as time filled with some other content, or even as empty time. Similarly, the news that my friend N. has died is a proposition; and it would be a judgment only if there were a question whether he was really dead or only in a state of catalepsy. § 1351 In the usual way of defining the judgment we may indeed accept the indeterminate expression connection for the external copula, as also that the connected terms are at least supposed to be notions. But in other respects this definition is superficial in the extreme: not only, for example, that in the disjunctive judgment more than two so−called notions are connected, but rather that the definition is far better than its subject matter; for it is not notions at all that are meant, hardly determinations of the Notion, but really only determinations of representational thought; it was remarked in connection with the Notion in general and the determinate Notion, that what is usually so named by no means deserves the name of Notion; where then should Notions come from in the case of the judgment? Above all, in this definition the essential feature of the judgment, namely, the difference of its determinations, is passed over; still less does it take into account the relationship of the judgment to the Notion. § 1352 As regards the further determination of the subject and predicate, we have remarked that it is really in the judgment first that they have to receive their determination. Since the judgment is the posited determinateness of the Notion, this determinateness possesses the said differences immediately and abstractly as individuality and universality. But in so far as the judgment is in general the determinate being or otherness of the Notion which has not yet restored itself to the unity whereby it is as Notion, there emerges also−the determinateness which is notionless, the opposition of being and reflection or the in−itself. But since the Notion constitutes the essential ground of the judgment, these determinations are at least indifferent to the extent that when one belongs to the subject and the other to the predicate, the converse relationship equally holds good. The subject as the individual appears, in the first instance, as that which simply is or is for itself in accordance with the specific determinateness of the individual −− as an actual object, even though it be only an object in Science of Logic Chapter 2 The Judgment 99 representational thought −− as for example bravery, right, agreement, etc. −− on which judgment is being made. The predicate, on the other hand, as the universal, appears as this reflection on the object, or rather as the object's reflection into itself, which goes beyond that immediacy and sublates the determinatenesses in their form of mere being; that is, it is the object's in−itself. In this way, one starts from the individual as the first, the immediate, and it is raised by the judgment into universality, just as, conversely, the universal that is only in itself descends in the individual into determinate being or becomes a being that is for itself. § 1353 This signification of the judgment is to be taken as its objective meaning, and at the same time as the truth of the earlier forms of the transition. In the sphere of being, the object becomes and others itself, the finite perishes or goes under in the infinite; in the sphere of Existence, the object issues from its ground into Appearance and falls to the ground, the accident manifests the wealth of substance as well as its power; in being, there is transition into an other, in essence, reflected being in an other by which the necessary relation is revealed. This movement of transition and reflection has now passed over into the original partition of the Notion which, while bringing back the individual to the in−itself of its universality, equally determines the universal as something actual. These two acts are one and the same process in which individuality is posited in its reflection−into−self, and the universal as determinate. § 1354 But now this objective signification equally implies that the said differences, in reappearing in the determinateness of the Notion, are at the same time posited only as Appearances, that is, that they are not anything fixed, but apply just as much to the one Notion determination as to the other. The subject is, therefore, just as much to be taken as the in−itself, and the predicate, on the other hand, as determinate being. The subject without predicate is what the thing without qualities, the thing−in−itself is in the sphere of Appearance −− an empty, indeterminate ground; as such, it is the Notion enclosed within itself, which only receives a differentiation and determinateness in the predicate; the predicate therefore constitutes the side of the determinate being of the subject. Through this determinate universality the subject stands in relation to an externality, is open to the influence of other things and thereby becomes actively opposed to them. What is there comes forth from its being−within−self and enters into the universal element of connection and relationship, into the negative connections and the interplay of actuality, which is a continuation of the individual into other individuals and therefore universality. § 1355 The identity just demonstrated, namely, that the determination of the subject equally applies to the predicate and vice versa, is not, however, something only for us; it is not merely in itself, but is also posited in the judgment; for the judgment is the connection of the two; the copula expresses that the subject is the predicate. The subject is the specific determinateness, and the predicate is this posited determinateness of the subject; the subject is determined only in its predicate, or, only in the predicate is it a subject; in the predicate it has returned into itself and is therein the universal. Now in so far as the subject is the self−subsistent, this identity has the relationship that the predicate does not possess a self−subsistence of its own, but has its subsistence only in the subject; it inheres in the subject. Since the predicate is thus distinct from the subject, it is only an isolated determinateness of the latter, only one of its properties; while the subject itself is the concrete, the totality of manifold determinatenesses, just as the predicate contains one; it is the universal. § 1356 But on the other hand the predicate, too, is a self−subsistent universality and the subject, conversely, only a determination of it. Looked at this way, the predicate subsumes the subject; individuality and particularity are Science of Logic Chapter 2 The Judgment 100 not for themselves, but have their essence and substance in the universal. The predicate expresses the subject in its Notion; the individual and the particular are contingent determinations in the subject; it is their absolute possibility. When in the case of subsumption one thinks of an external connection of subject and predicate and the subject is conceived of as a self−subsistent something, the subsumption refers to the subjective act of judgment above−mentioned in which one starts from the self−subsistence of both subject and predicate. From this standpoint subsumption is only the application of the universal to a particular or an individual, which is placed under the universal in accordance with a vague idea that it is of inferior quality. § 1357 When the identity of subject and predicate are so taken that at one time one Notion determination applies to the former and the other to the latter, and at another time the converse equally holds good, then the identity is as yet still only an implicit one; on account of the self−subsistent diversity of the two sides of the judgment, their posited unity also has these two sides, in the first instance as different. But differenceless identity really constitutes the true relation of the subject to the predicate. The Notion determination is itself essentially relation for it is a universal; therefore the same determinations possessed by the subject and predicate are also possessed by their relation itself. The relation is universal, for it is the positive identity of the two, of subject and predicate; but it is also determinate, for the determinateness of the predicate is that of the subject; further, it is also individual, for in it the self−subsistent extremes are sublated as in their negative unity. However, in the judgment this identity is not as yet posited; the copula is present as the still indeterminate relation of being as such: A is B; for in the judgment, the self−subsistence of the Notion determinatenesses or the extremes, is the reality which the Notion has within it. If the is of the copula were already posited as the above determinate and pregnant unity of subject and predicate, as their Notion, it would already be the syllogism. § 1358 To restore this identity of the Notion, or rather to posit it, is the goal of the movement of the judgment. What is already present in the judgment is, on the one hand, the self−subsistence of subject and predicate, but also their mutually opposed determinateness, and on the other hand their none the less abstract relation. What the judgment enunciates to start with is that the subject is the predicate; but since the predicate is supposed not to be what the subject is, we are faced with a contradiction which must resolve itself, pass over into a result. Or rather, since subject and predicate are in and for themselves the totality of the Notion, and the judgment is the reality of the Notion, its forward movement is only a development; there is already present in it what comes forth from it, so that proof is merely an exposition, a reflection as a positing of that which is already present in the extremes of the judgment; but even this positing itself is already present; it is the relation of the extremes. § 1359 The judgment in its immediacy is in the first instance the judgment of existence; its subject is immediately an abstract individual which simply is, and the predicate is an immediate determinateness or property of the subject, an abstract universal. This qualitative character of subject and predicate being sublated, the determination of the one is reflected, to begin with, in the other; the judgment is now, secondly, the judgment of reflection. But this more external conjunction passes over into the essential identity of a substantial, necessary connection; as such it is, thirdly, the judgment of necessity. Science of Logic Chapter 2 The Judgment 101 Fourthly, since in this essential identity the difference of subject and predicate has become a form, the judgment becomes subjective; it contains the opposition of the Notion and its reality and the equation of the two; it is the judgment of the Notion. This emergence of the Notion establishes the transition of the Judgment into the syllogism. A. THE JUDGMENT OF EXISTENCE § 1360 In the subjective judgment we want to see one and the same object double, first in its individual actuality, and then in its essential identity or in its Notion: the individual raised into its universality, or, what is the same thing, the universal individualised into its actuality. In this way the judgment is truth: for it is the agreement of the Notion and reality. But this is not the nature of the judgment at first; for at first it is immediate, since as yet no reflection and movement of the determinations has appeared in it. This immediacy makes the first judgment a judgment of existence; it can also be called the qualitative judgment, but only in so far as quality does not apply only to the determinateness of being but also includes the abstract universality which, on account of its simplicity, likewise has the form of immediacy. § 1361 The judgment of existence is also the judgment of inherence; because it is in the form of immediacy, and because the subject as distinguished from the predicate is the immedi